Sunday, March 17, 2013

Family Photos

I suppose it is about time to show a few family photos. Since I started this blog to document the Indian side of our family, those are the phoos I am including. And since our Melungon heritage is also part of the Indian side, here are a couple of photos from them.

This writing was found beside the photo of Jonathan
Wayland (left, Ar 1816- Ar 1882). Dad was A. O. Hawkins (1915-1992). His mother's maiden name was Loney Richey (1883-1963). er daddy was Jeff Richey (1854-1926). His Mama was Sarah Ann Wayland (1819-1857). She and Jonathan Wayland (in the photo) were first cousins. My Wayland's go back to the Saponi, who were a Northern band of the Catawba, and were made up by members of bands that became extinct, or virtually so.

Reverend Jonathan Wayland was a farmer and a well-known
Methodist minister. One of his grandsons and a great-grandson also
became Methodist ministers in Arkansas. "In addition to looking after his
farming interests, Jonathan Wayland became known as a great Methodist preacher.
He must have been a great and good man. He built the first Methodist church in
that section of the country on his farm, the foundation of which until recent
years still stood. After his death a memorial church was built in the Jessup
neighborhood north of Strawberry, Arkansas in honor or Jonathan Wayland and Eli
Lindsay. There was a wonderful spring on the Jonathan Wayland property which
was used in the early days in lieu of refrigeration. The spring and property
adjoining to the west was deeded to the Methodist Church by Jonathan Wayland,
and today the Methodists have turned it into a camp site for the young people.
A large swimming pool has been built that is fed by the spring." Jonathan
Wayland was a brunette with dark brown hair and brown eyes. [note: It was Jonathan's father Nevil Jr., who helped build that church.]Jonathan wasn't born until 1816. And his father, Nevil Jr, is the same Nevil Wayland who was church clerk at Stoney Creek Primitive Baptish Church from about 1801-on.

This is my great-great-grandma, Harriet (Guess/Gist) Brown (1818-1886). Her daughter, Josephine Brown, married Jeff Richey (below) in 1872 and they moved from Arkansas to Indian Territory (Oklahoma).

Josephine (Brown) Richey was wife to Jeff. The elder lady in this photograph is her. The man beside her is my uncle Andrew Hawkins, her grandson and Dad's older brother. Since she died in 1932, this was taken probably about 1930, about the time the Dust Bowl hit or just bfore.

The photo above is a 1909-1910 school photo of a rural school district in Southwestern Oklahoma. There are two Richey boys in the photo -- Otho and Hoten Jr., alhough they misspell his name as "Holton". Their father is the man above, Jeff Richey, with the mustache. Hoten's actual name was the same as his father's, Jeffrey Hoten Richey, but since the father was called Jeffrey, the son was called "Hoten". A blow up of the two richey boys is below:

Well if I ever learn to put these side by side, I'll do it. Above left is Hoten and to the left is Otho. They are two of grandma's brothers. Both were born in the Chickasaw Nation (although our family was not Chickasaw) in South-central Oklahoma (then Indian Territory).

Below is grandma and I personally knew her. I remember as a child, her getting blossoms from that very honey suckle vine, and showing me how to suck the honey from it.

Below are photos of my father taken directly from his drivers license, so it DID pass for an I. D. the one on bottom was his last, so he was 4 years older in that one. He was A. O. Hawkins, b. 1915, d. 1992.

If I ever ty to enlarge one of these, I will -- computer won't let me do it, right now. Oh, I am so frustrated! On one photo he is darker than the other -- but that is just the lighting when the photo was taken. These photos were taken 4 years apart. I don't know why one was well lit and the other wasn't. Oh well.

This last photo is me -- we get whiter every generation. Dad was the last in my line with dark skin, so I wanted to create and document a record of us, or the transformation from dark to light skinned people.

I thought honest to God, I was smiling when this photo was taken. I wanted to show off this photo because it was i.] recent, ii.] I am wearing th t-shirt I got at Oklahoma Historical Society and iii.] That sweat is proof I could still run -- just ran 2 miles on a tread mill when it was taken. At 60 years of age that's not bad. :) I have given up on having a good photo of me -- I always look like an idiot.

This is the most recent photo of me taken about a year ago. I have become a member of a state recognized tribe -- Echota Cherokee of Alabama. I am proud of that. It took me twenty years of research. I had this photo taken for the tribal membership photo

This page was taken from "A Centenniel Histoy of Methodism in Arkansas, 1815-1935". You can see that this photo of Jonathan was taken from the larger photo at the top of this page.Our Waylands helped organize the first church of any kind in Arkansas Territory @ 1815. And since one of he churches they helped organize was west of the White River, it wasi n what was then called Indian Territory. In fact our church predates the more famous "Dwight Mission" by three years, ours being founded in 1815 and theirs in 1818
(Chronicles of Oklahoma; Volume 7, No. 4, December, 1929,
BEGINNING OF METHODISM IN INDIAN TERRITORY, J. Y. Bryce).

.

Jonathan Wayland's father was Nevil Wayland Jr, brother to my ancestor, William Wayland. Nevil Jr was clerk at the Stoney creek Primitive Baptist Church in Scott County, Virginia, the church made famous by Jack Gions in his book, "Melungeons and other Pioneer Families". It was in the Minutes of this church that the word "Melungeons" has first been found in 1811. Most of our Wayland's moved from Southwestern Virginia to Arkansas by 1815, moving west with Abraham Ruddle, a man held captive by he Shawnee for 18 years, since he was a child (from “Pioneers and Makers of Arkansas”, p 339-342 by
Josiah H. Shinn, A. M.). Our Nevil Jr may very well have been the man who scribed the word "Melungins" in those church minutes. At one point in the minutes of that church it was written they purchased ink and paper for Nevil's usage, in his role as church clerk..

2 comments:

can you tell me the difference between melungeon, lumbee and red bone? I too ended up being as my mama said a heinz 57. I have family I know to be red bones but actually it seems like a personality trait rather than race. What do you think? J

The Lumbee live in Robison County, NC. The Melungeons originally lived in SW Virginia and NE Tennessee. Both descend from people who are Eastern Siouan (related to the Catawba) and are related. When people expand the definition of "Melungeons" to include other populations, it confuses people, and people often do that. I don't know much about the Redbones.

About Me

Howdy. I am a 60 year old male (as of late December, 2012). I am using this particular photo for two reasons. i.] I am wearing my t-shirt that I bought at Oklahoma Historical Society in Oklahoma City -- I am vrey proud to be an Oklahoman. And ii.] I had just run 2 miles at the gym on a treadmill when that photo was taken. I am also proud to still be able to run a little at 60 years of age. My body is changing though, and I don't know if I'll still be able to run at 61. If it is possible, I will do it. Wish me luck.

I am mostly Caucasian, with a little American Indian and sub-Sahara African DNA mixed in (per DNA testing), Caucasian blood is English, German, and Scots-Irish, probably in equal amounts. American Indian blood seems to be Cherokee and/or Catawba. So many people claim some Cherokee heritage that I hesitate to mention it. Before going further I need to say we are NOT federally enrolled and we don't belong to any of the state recognized groups either. African blood will be researched later. I fear it will be nearly impossible to learn much about, but one day, I'll try. Finding African blood was an unexpected result of searching my Indian blood. Genealogy research is my passion.

My passion has also always been research of any kind, Noone ever hired me to do any, so I made my own research projects,with my genealogy project a prime example. I am proud of our research and have written a book "Finding Our Indian Blood" which will be published shortly by Bluewater Publishing.

I have a Bachelors degree in Mathematics (57 hours) with a Physics Minor (31 hours). I used to search for days on end to be hired to use that degree, but noone cared about it. I was overqualified or underqualified for every job there was. Eventually I gave up and quit telling people about it so I could get hired to do anything.

The bulk of my blogging will be about i.] genalogy research methods; ii.] my family genealogy; iii.] little known Cherokee communities and research; iv.] little known Catawba communities and research; v.] Eventually I will go into African-American genealogy research, especially as it pertains to the mixed race Indian peoples known as "Melungeon". I will fight with my last breath those idiotic notions that the Melungeons are Gypsies or Portuguese. vi.] I love Oklahoma to death. I will write about Oklahoma history as well.

vii.] Years back I had an interest in Bible prophecy. I have always thought you had to be humble to understand it. Thus those who said "God told them" how to interpret things were boasting, therefore they were not humble, therefore you couldn't believe they had any connection at all with God. I suspect God talks only with the meek and the poor, and I might be wrong about that, too. I suspect you'll have to torture me by pulling my teeth without any pain killer to get me to say much about this -- and I wear dentures so good luck with that.

Also, I have an interest in Astronomy, in UFOs, anyhting where I can use my curiosity to consider research of the unknown. I suspect I might not post about these things, either.

I also love dogs, chess, horses, and I suppose goats, too. In fact I must admit I like goats better than I like sheep. It's beyond me why the writers of the Bible preferred sheep, and why they demonized the poor resourceful goat. Well, they also said "for without are dogs" -- shame on them!

If there are no dogs in Heaven, well I am not sure I wanna go there. I recall an episode of "The Twilight Zone" where an elderly man and his dog both died. When they both walked up to the Pearly Gates the man was told his dog wasn't allowed. He said if his dog wasn't allowed, he didn't want to go there, either. Well, it turned out that was the gates of Hell, not Heaven. He eventually reached those Pearly Gates where his buddy was allowed. That's probably the most important lesson about anything that I have ever learned, or am ever likely to learn. And what was that lesson? Dogs are our guardian angels, of course! Well, that's a part of it, anyhow.

Another thing I have learned, I must travel about 20 blind allies to find a nugget of genealogical gold. The vast majority of my research finds nothing at all -- at least not about my family. But it does discover bits and pieces about the big picture, and as such might benefit others more than me. But I too benefit by gaining a little knowledge -- and oh, I do crave knowledge like an addict.

So this blog will cover a little bit about a lot of things, but as time passes that little bit will turn into a mountain, if I live long enough.

For the present though, the blog will cover things related to "my book, "Finding Our Indian Blood", a bit of research of which I am quite proud. It has taken at least 20 years and a thousand hours, and maybe 100 of those hours found something about my family. But the rest was useful also -- the book is only the tip of the iceberg.

I dedicate this blog and book to the thousands of sand grains on the river bottom that can be shown to have, once upon a time, millions of years back, been a part of a larger rock or boulder. And to that rock or boulder that can be proven to have been, millions of years even further back, at the top of the mountain. In short, it is dedicated to making a mountain out of a mole hill.

Oh, and dedicated to discovery, to research of all kinds, colors, shapes and sizes.